Dance Theater shot with D80 and 18-70: Success!

[sjmurray]

My neighbor is a seamstress and costume designer. Last weekend she asked me to

photograph a performance of a local dance theater because she designed and had

sewn all the costumes for the performance. Now, I do not usually photograph

stage or dance performances, but I told her I would do it. I didn?t know the

lighting or where I would be seated, so I brought along a bunch of prime lenses

from 24 to 200mm, and my 18-70 kit lens (for my D80). I ended up in the front

row on the right end of the row. It turned out the 18-70 was the ideal lens to

use because the performers moved quickly across the stage and I would have

missed a lot of shots if I had not used a zoom lens. Fortunately, the stage

lights were fairly bright most of the time, even though they changed colors with

each dance. Focal lengths used ranged from 30-70mm. I used iso 2000 and the

shutter speeds ranged from 1/20 to 1/320 with 1/125 about average. Since the

18-70 is limited to f 3.5-4.5 this would not have been my ideal choice of a

lens. But, at the high iso afforded by the DSLR, the photos turned out quite

well, and in fact, the f4-4.5 apertures gave me greater depth of field than if I

had used a 2.8 lens wide open. The 18-70 focuses quickly and there was plenty

of brightness for focusing. I turned off the focus assist light so it wouldn?t

bother the performers. Noise was very acceptable with careful post processing

from RAW in Adobe ACR. At 8x10 print size or as web jpgs the noise will be very

minimal.

 

My conclusion is that stage performances can be successfully photographed with a

DSLR and a kit lens at moderate aperture if shot in RAW to control the white

balance and contrast issues. Using ACR I typically just made sure the color

noise reduction was at maximum. I typically do not use any ?luminance smoothing?

in ACR, but if any underexposure caused excessive luminance noise I used Neat

Image just to reduce the noise to normal levels and retain as much sharpness as

possible. I did this with only a few of the 60 or so images that were

?keepers,? out of 180 total shots in a one hour long performance.

 

I'm posting some sample images after this post.<div></div>

[sjmurray]

Here's a few sample shots.<div></div>

[diane_madura]

Nice job, Steve.

[bruce_margolis]

Steve, I tried using ISO 1600 with my D80 but was pretty disappointed. The noise was extreme, probably the combination of a very dark background with a substantial crop. Maybe you just have a better copy.

 

I was curious what yours would look like with noise reduction so I applied Noiseware. It offered some improvement but enlargements may be an issue.

[squiggs77]

Steve, I don't know if you can afford/justify it, but if you want to use a lower ISO I would highly recommend the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 or the 28-70mm f2.8 depending on the reach that you need. But the f2.8 will give you a smaller Depth of Field.

 

I have both the Nikon 18-70mm and Tamron 17-50mm f2.8 and I don't use my 18-70mm anymore. :)

[stephen dohring]

Your conclusion is fine based on not selling the images or publishing. My conclusion is that the quality is not there, you could not sell them. Taken for a freind or family member but my opinion as far a selling them no way. Nothing against your photography, you got some great compositions, I just don't think even with a 2.8 lens anyone can get good enough quality with any Nikon under a D300. I shot 2000 with my D300 and they are agueably acceptable with lots of post and thankfully images print better than they look on screen.

[marypar4]

used my 18-70 in exactly the same situation (dance recital) got some wonderful results..as seen on http://www.kodakgallery.com/ShareLandingSignin.jsp?Uc=i9ke4lw.5bpffnko&Uy=40p6z1&Upost_signin=Slideshow.jsp%3Fmode%3Dfromshare&Ux=0&UV=639607930668_708350515208

my iso was keep down to 400 with flash..shutter 60/4.5 came out pretty good for kit lens.

[photo5]

You guys would be surprised how bad some images sold for pro usage really look. I'll bet these images would be fine in a publication. Try printing out an ISO 1600 shot from the D80 and you'll be pretty surprised how good it looks. Grain is smoothed in the printing process, it's pretty amazing really.

[mmene]

Your conclusion is right Steve. This is one of my shots with 2200iso f/5, 1/125.

[hughes]

Steve

 

Great pics and a very good post I love to see people make do with the equipment they have, good careful technique makes up for equipment limitations every time.

 

I must take issue with the ridiculous assertions of Steve Dohring "I just don't think even with a 2.8 lens anyone can get good enough quality with any Nikon under a D300" well if that is the case what have we all been doing for the last 100 years before the D300 came out. Attached is a picture shot with a D200 at 500ASA in very poor amateur lighting I am confident it could also have been taked with a D70 no problem, admittedly no award winner but printed well up to 11X14. I must admit that the newer cameras have an advantage in situations like this but to write off anything below a D300 is ridiculous. As to Steve's pictures most local papers would be delighted to publish them they are more than adequate for newspaper publication.

 

Steve<div></div>

[elliot1]

Beautiful shots! Colors and composition are excellent. The D80 is a very capable camera in the hands of a skilled photographer - congratulations.

 

If you have CS3, try Dfine 2.0 noise reduction software. They offer a free demo. I have processed ISO 1600 D80 raw images with it and the results are incredible - exceptional noise reduction with virtually no loss of sharpness.

[tonybeach]

Very nice shots.

 

You would undoubtedly have less noise in them if you used a different converter.

[eric_arnold]

like the shots, good work, especially with the 18-70.

one thing: ISO 2000 seems a bit high. you might be able to get away with a lower ISO with bright stage lighting. i generally never go above 1600 with the d80, although your results look pretty good.

[sjmurray]

Thanks for all the comments, everybody!

 

About ?noise.? I shot Tri-X developed in D-76 1:1 from the late 60?s until I got a D70. An 11x14 print from Tri-X 35mm developed in anything except a super fine grain developer will look as ?noisy? as any of these D80 shots at 2000 iso at the same print size. Everyone loves the look of Tri-X, even when developed in Rodinal, which makes the grain look like sand on the print paper. IMO, if you can get rid of the color noise, which is really what is ugly in an image, and still have some luminance noise, you really have what amounts to what looks like grain in a film image. Any good raw converter these days does a good job of eliminating color noise, now that digital sensors are as good as they are today.

 

The problem with smoothing out luminance noise in digital is similar to using a super fine grain developer with film: you have to soften the grain, which results in decreasing the image?s edge sharpness and definition. With film you use a high sulfite developer which literally dissolves some of the grain, resulting in a smoother image but sacrificing sharpness and acuity. If you play with your raw converter or noise reducing software you will find the same thing. The more you dissolve the grain, the more fine detail you sacrifice. I don?t think that some grain is a bad thing. A super smooth image that is not sharp is much worse IMO.

 

Elliot, thanks for the tip for Dfine. I tried it with CS (you don?t need CS3) and got essentially identical results that I get with Neat Image. With both programs I would only reduce the luminance noise a little bit so as to retain maximum sharpness. Anthony, I did play with the Nikon converter and found the same rules of physics to apply, that smoothing luminance noise will result in a softer image. You can apply some sharpening after smoothing it, but that can introduce some artifacts as well, which don?t look good to me.

 

It sounds like the sensor in the D3 makes a great advance in high iso quality. I?d certainly love to have one! In the old days I simply used a medium or large format camera in order to get ultra fine detail and smoothness at the same time. Some things don?t? change, I guess. But, using a small camera with good sharp lenses, I don?t find any aesthetic rules somehow being ravaged, as some people seem to imply, when there is some visible grain in an image. That?s my two cents.

 

Again, thanks for all the responses.

[tonybeach]

"Anthony, I did play with the Nikon converter and found the same rules of physics to apply, that smoothing luminance noise will result in a softer image."

 

>I'm not talking about NR, I'm talking about noise being introduced by inferior demosaicing algorithms -- something ACR does particularly badly compared to the converters I use. In your last shot for instance, I see a lot of chroma noise, and I am willing to bet that my converters would deliver less of that and a finer grain (see the D200 patches in my first post in this thread: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00Nlxt to see what I mean). I would be happy to see what difference it would make and post the results here if you wanted to email me the NEF file.

[diane_madura]

I hope I'm not hijacking your thread, Steve. Anthony, what raw converter do you use? I'm guessing from the link you provided that it's Raw Magic Lite. It looks very nice in your link.

 

Steve, I have done some stage work, have used ISO 800 to ISO 1600. I personally haven't seen much of a noise issue as long as I expose correctly and don't have to lighten up the mid tones. I use Nikon Capture NX. If I have to lighten up, however, I do have noise.

[lex_jenkins]

Those look fine and really show the advantage to a good dSLR. Photographing theatre with film was often a nightmare. I was forced to use Delta 3200 at 1600-3200, or a 400 film pushed to 800-1600. Color film was usually out of the question, altho' on rare occasions there was enough light for one of Fuji's good 800 color negative films.

 

Not good enough for publication? Pooh. You should take a look at National Geographic when they first started using digital. Horrible. Come to think of it, NatGeo's photo-reproduction has been spotty at best and dismal at worst for the past 10 years. They need a better printing service.

 

Every time a new dSLR hits the shelves there's a sudden wave of nauseous fear that it's no longer possible to make good photos with the "obsolete" equipment.

 

Remember when we never saw any photos whatsoever of some events, including live theatre, because it was simply impossible to make exposures?

[sjmurray]

Anthony, this summer I did a direct comparison of ACR, Capture NX and Raw Magic Lite. What I saw was NX by default did some luminance smoothing at the expense of detail, and RML had the worst color noise in my test. I'll email you the samples. I don't have any nefs of the above files, just dng, which nx doesn't process. I could take a test shot witht the d80 for you and email it. I really am interested in getting the best noise reduction possible, but so far all I've seen is that its done at the expense of fine detail, demosaicing algorithms notwithstanding. That last shot you refer to doesn't have color noise, what you see is the result of colored lights on the stage.

[tonybeach]

Hi Steve,

 

As I mentioned in my email reply, I have a suspicion that your Raw Magick Lite settings may not have been optimal and you can disable NR in NX.

 

You are throwing out your original NEFs? I don't think that's advisable. By all means take test shot and send it to me and I'll post them here if you are interested.

 

The last shot has lots of color noise (blue and red, surely the light was only one color).

[sjmurray]

Yeah, Lex, you are right on. If you scan 800 iso film, its an ugly mess compared to what a modern DSLR can do.